Scourge of War - Napoleon, A Peninsular Campaign

RULES

Now moved to the NPC area.

I'll play.

No team preference.

Looks interesting. A very complex historical situation, indeed. I'm in.

This sounds really spectacular Digby - good job. Count me in certainly, no side preference I suppose.

I really like the sound of the different "levels" of play there will be in this one.

When do we start?!

Ollie
Blackstreet / Ruenoir / Callenegro / Pretorua

where the French have captured a banana-shaped chunk of central Iberia from Lisbon, via Madrid up to the Pyrenees

Hmm...I've always wanted to be a generalissimo in charge of a banana republic. I'm in. This would also be an opportunity for some of the 'paper kriegspielers' to join in.

Yes I'd be interested too. Happy to play any faction of any side.

Martin (J)

Where do I sign? I prefer Allies.

GCM regulars, please can you post on the GCM forum a link to here in case anyone there would like to join? Thanks!

Mr. Digby wrote:GCM regulars, please can you post on the GCM forum a link to here in case anyone there would like to join? Thanks!

Done: http://forums.sowmp.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=470

I will play and don't care which side

Thanks for the interest so far everyone and thanks Soldier for the link.

Having dived deeper into the history of the early war (summer 1808) I think I'll begin the first season in about June just when the poop hit the fan and it will only consist of various (and interesting) Spanish armies vs the French. The British will come ashore later and the Portuguese army won't be effective until the 2nd campaign season in 1809.

The Spanish are not centralised and consist of many armies, each commander having his own agenda so some role-playing would be good here.

The French high command's priorities might also not mesh fully with the general's interests, so on both sides we have scope for fun and shenanigans.

I would be interested in giving this a go. Don't really care what side.

I'm game - don't mind the side, and would prefer to stay off the battlefield until I get SoW set up (after rental and job are arranged) in the next month or two.

Till then I don't mind doing whatever suits, then sticking with the same faction later or transferring to one of the newer teams when they appear on the field.

EDIT: Rules moved to first post.

Bloody Hell diggers - it's good to have you back!

Just shut up and read it! Then let me know what's so obviously broken

Mr. Digby wrote:Just shut up and read it! Then let me know what's so obviously broken

I have read it, and am digesting it I'm glad I put all those hours into learning wargames in the past, it really pays off when reading a list of rules like this. I don't think anything is obviously broken.

Only a few comments at this stage:

1) Presumably you will arbitrate when the (inevitable) grey areas crop up?

2) I would prefer to use more non-Gettysburg maps, i.e. Garnier's Random Maps 6 and so on which are very nice, and well suited for campaign gaming.

That's it from me. Impressive rules list Diggers, I wonder how the others will fare!

1) Yes, although if there's a tough call to be made I usually roll a dice for it. I try and not have a bias. Of course player input can be helpful as well, in case there's issues I missed.

2) Yes, I will try and use as many of the 'non-ACW looking' maps as I can but since a few battles are bound to ocur at significant water barriers, towns, defiles, hills, etc we'll have to fall back on some ACW maps, but out in the open farmland areas I'll try to use the maps he made for the Nap Mod. Its a great shame Garnier doesn't add buildings to his maps, a few Spanish style houses would make all the difference.

A random map with a very hard to cross major stream or minor river across the centre like Antietam has would be a very useful map to have as well.

EDIT: I added a link to Nafziger's "Armies of Spain and Portugal 1808-1815" which is a pdf file and well worth reading to get an idea of the complete chaos the Spanish Rebellion caused.

Looks good, and pretty straight-forward.

I'm not clear where you'd need the rear-echelon commanders for the larger sides, unless you had in mind assigning 'front line' commanders with areas of command close to the enemy, and others passing units forward to them / maintaining the supply lines?

Any rules for recruitment mid-year, or would it be all at the end of each campaigning season?

Napoleon would be the main off-stage personality, issuing instructions to his senior commander which is Murat in Madrid and Bessieres near the Pyrenees. If things go bad there will be a historical option for Napoleon to enter the campaign at the head of some Imperial Guard troops as happened in reality. If things go very well, he would not need to step in... a nice conundrum for the French team if they choose to use hindsight

Since I made my first announcement I have been reading a lot more about the war and in fact there was less work spent dealing with Spanish insurrectionists and small garrisons and threats to the smaller French garrisons and more in the nature of corps and divisions sent off on roving missions to capture certain Spanish fortresses or crush smaller armies that were assembling, particularly in Cataluna, Aragon and Valencia (all down the east coast) and to a lesser extent in the north around Bilbao and Santander. While there are main corps and armies that face off the main Spanish forces north and south of Madrid, the campaigning that goes on in the east is quite similar in nature but has a focus more on capturing fortresses and making sure the main French LoC from Bayonne is kept open.

That reminds me that I need to add that to the rules. While their armies can operate from the supply bases like cities and fortresses in the centre of the country (Madrid, Burgos), they must still keep a main LoS open to France down which all replacement troops come, and all communicatiuons with the Emperor.

The French team will need to watch their lines of supply; each city and fortress can only support so many troops in the field. They can do this one of two ways - either each corps commander is responsible for maintining his own LoS and splits off troops from his command to furnish the necessary garrisons, or Murat/Bessieres allocate one or more players to be responsible for doing all the garrisoning and having small field forces mobile enough to hit Spanish armies that try to disrupt the LoS's. In reality the second option was chosen, so there could be scope for a couple of the French players to be left to undertake these duties. In addition there will be a certain amount of bookkeeping to determine where supplies and taxation is Adequate or Good and which turns the camapign is Succeeding or Failing. While I'll have a master record of that, it would help the French team if a player or two was also allocated that staff work so that they can advise Murat/Bessieres of the current position.

I am pinning down in some detail the places and times that historical forces became active. Small Spanish armies seem to have popped up all over the place so reinforcements will become active following a mostly historical table. For example there might be a Spanish player who is the General commanding in Andalucia and has a main army or two on operations. He'll get a note saying that at Seville and Malaga are a new division and a new brigade. He will then be able to issue them orders to move where he needs them. The Spanish were not terribly well organised so these reinforcements will come as a surprise to the player getting them while the French, due to their superior organisation, will be informed in advance of what recruits or extra units their generals/players will be getting. Likewise the French sent a steady flow of fresh units or recruits over the Pyrenees and these will reach major depots (fortresses? cities?) the French hold and then become active. The French formed recruits into "battalions de marche", ad-hoc administrative units assembled just to get warm bodies from A to B and of low combat value. Once these reached a main depot the recruits would be sent on ahead to their units down the LoS of their parent corps. I'll abstract much of this but there will be opportunity for the Spanish to try and attack such reinforcing colmuns as they come over the border although the French had a pretty good hold on the border fortresses for almost all the war making such attacks unlikely (about as likely as the French taking Cadiz, for example)

If the game flows away from history to the extent that some Spanish cities where armies formed historically are captured I'll allow them to appear eleswhere but at a weaker state due to the disruption. This is not terribly likely though since most Spanish units were formed at the coasts and marched inland to join the field armies (aka they went down the LoS to join their respective armies).

Some of the above needs to be mentioned in the rules I think.

One thing I'm discovering about the 1808 campaign is that battles were pretty small. The Spanish rarely seemed to be able to gather 30,000 men in one place and usually not half that, while French forces were smaller, on the whole, but much better quality. The lack of balance between the sides should prove interesting and make for some tough decisions.

I have since found that while the Portuguese army was pretty much swept away by desertion when Junot took Lisbon in December 1807, and the chunk that remained was forcefully formed into the Portuguese Legion by the French and marched off to Germany to fight for Napoleon, some troops under some determined officers did remain active. Its not much though and not really enough for a player to command unless we get a few more people interested. I think I can best represent this resistance to the French in Portugal by having a few places turn 'unfriendly' which should keep Junot on his toes. Since the main French presence was in Lisbon the resistance showed itself mostly in the north and south of the country.

I might put a Portuguese town/port on the map down in the Algarve since there's nothing down there and there was a French force that marched right down to Faro in 1808 and captured it from the rebels.

When do we find out who we are?

EDIT: Player list moved to first post.

Sure, I'm interested in the campaign. Any side, preferrably a minor role. Must catch up with the rules yet.

Mr. Digby wrote:I can allocate players to sides now. So far only Baldwin has expressed a preference (Spanish to begin with, moving to British/Portuguese when they show up) and we have 9 players that have signed up so 5 vs 4. It would really be good to have about 2 teams of 8. I wonder if some of the Kriegspiel players who don't usually play SoW would join us? Martin, would you like to do an e-mail circular?

Yes this should appeal to the kriegsspielers. I'll see what can be done.

Martin (J)

I'm happy to be Spanish - don't mind which role I take down that order of importance, as long as my loyal comrades in arms don't mind commanding my troops in battle at first.

This should be a lot of fun